"These are thoughts expounded in January of 2002 and after, and sort of became the basis for this website. I have removed irrelevant material, things which just passed out of existance, etc. I need to thank (in order of appearance: Michael Bulka for his initial comments, Keri Butler who owned the Topica.Com "Other Group" location, Rob Ray who proposed help with a server and suggested slash-code, and others. "The initial idea revolved around a SQL database, but I never implemented it (although it is still available). I wrote a Procmail listserve in June of 2002, which was never put into use (a version was used and tested for the August invasion of Hammond Indiana). I wiped the files in November, and a week later Keri Butler suggested I do what I had just undone. "In March or there abouts Topica started adding ads at the bottom of 'FYI' which Keri also ran from Topica.Com. I suggested a Procmail script could be written at Spaces.Org to accomplish the same thing, and FYI was switched over in May of 2002. "So by this time I had had experience with three listserv's. The FYI broadcast listserv is 20 lines of script, and another 40 to handle bounces. So in the first week of December another Procmail version was written, coupled with PHP web pages, and placed at OtherGroup.Net, with the IP number at CounterPoint Networking (Cpoint.Net). "Since I have account access, setting this up was a piece of cake -- but it runs 600 lines of Procmail and Sed scripts, plus comments. In December all the posts distributed from Topica.Com were automatically archived at OtherGroup.Net, and I aquired and html-ized the posts from the last year. "It does not implement all the possibilities suggested below. But it is a start. At the end of February Keri abondened Topica.Com. -------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 17:36:53 -0600 (CST) From: jno To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Other Group : what would it take to make folks happy (MB) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 17:36:53 -0600 (CST) "On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, bulka wrote: " [..snip..] Is it a local problem - that there are so many galleries, so many neighborhoods, so many bars, that we don't reach critical mass in any one place; or that there is a Chicago spirit that is anti-literate, anti-intellectual, even anti-celebrity? "What do we want? Whad'ya wanna do about it? Answer: [x] all of the above to a greater or lesser degree. There are reasons why there is so little community, or 'critical mass', and little discussion. For one, we are out of school now, and on our own. The unhappyness is caused by our schoolish expectations of having critics speak for us. IMHO, to depend on a handful of 'art critics' is a waste of time. They will never cover all the shows, it will never be published - there isn't enough hard copy space, or interest. And yes, the rest of Chicago could care less. Art production is a fiercely competitive struggle among way too many people for way too few resources, with no-one else watching. It would certainly be delightful if there was more of a community, a place where you could check in and participate. But it is not going to be a bar down the street, cause we don't all live down the street. And it is not going to happen in print cause most of us can't write, or don't want to, at least not to the formal requirements of 'criticism'. Whatever form, you need to first jettison the dependency on 'critics' and the concept of 'criticism' -- we don't need that, we don't need them; they are too few, they can't possibly represent us when we are so many, and we are everywhere. And reading criticism is bad for you. Yuk. So stop complaining. Artists are better qualified to talk about art. An artists-run dialogue would make more sense, if they can get away from the expectations of how it is 'supposed' to be done. (long magazine-style paragraphs is one of those expectation) We don't need 'relevant art criticism' -- what we need is gossip, opinions, arguments, reponses, observations, party reports, histories and anecdotes, verbal tours, translations from 'artist statement', and whatever else might fill the gap between visual art and the verbal. Of course a 'magazine' as a container for this comes to mind, but we see what the magazines are _not_ doing or able to do. Something 'on-line' would make more sense: topical, immediate, available, archived, cross referenced, open to all -- and while we are at it: unmoderated, anonymous, and revisable. Sounds like 'Other Group' to me. I could offer the use of a spare domain for a web site, which would make it totally public and open to the whole community of other artists, viewers, gallery goers. Imagine: "what artists are saying about art". Dare anyone? I have tried this before in the past, with resounding silence. Maybe with the this present vocal group it could be accomplished. Imagine a CNN style page with headlines, links, "more", etc. Color, variety, and an index page composed on the fly, so that it would never look the same even to two people fetching at the same time. If this group could give some feedback by early next week, I could use the current thread as a sample on a hidden un-linked web page. Let me know if there is any interest. [watch everyone start lurking in the background again] /jno ================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 20:20:28 -0600 From: Keri L. Butler To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Re: Other Group : what would it take to make folks happy (MB) "... I could offer the use of a spare domain for a web site, which would make it totally public and open to the whole community of other artists, viewers, gallery goers..." I'm interested in discussing this idea further -- we should think about a few questions: -how will it be different from other local web sites? -who will manage it? more than one person? will it be edited or anarchic? -will people contribute if they know everyone can read what they write? can there be anonymous writings? -could there be selected topic threads that people can choose to participate in? I can work on this with you jno at the end of the month. keri 4 ==^================================================================ Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 01:50:19 -0600 (CST) From: bulka To: othergroup@topica.com We're good at questions, and some of ian's (and mine) were good, but we're not so good at answers. I like jno's active anarchy, but that depends on him or someone like him to make it work. And it sounds a lot like Gravy and FGA, which haven't been raving successes. No editing results in slop, too much is staid and slow. Still, there is too much thinking and planning and not enough doing. Jno and I are probably among the oldest guys here - why aren't you kids kicking our asses? If jno can set up a structure, we ought to be able to flood it with content, and we'll figure out editorial stuff as it is needed. Being "as good as a Xerox", or "better than 25 years ago" doesn't mean anything. We are as good as we are today and our community is who we choose it to be. As long as you acknowledge the power of the mainstream local press or the New York magazines you accept your status in their eyes - a side-show at best, or a charity case. Let's fight among ourselves, and if those other folks want to press their noses against the glass, let them. And Derek Guthrie's twenty-year-old newsprint passion is still more interesting than the current NAE's four-color perfect-bound complacency. michael ==^================================================================ From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 11:57:36 2002 Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 03:15:11 -0600 (CST) From: jno To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: :: better watch what you say Not to change the topic, but.. Bulka said, "our community is who we choose it to be." Other Group is a community of 72 'subscribers' (so say the poop at Topica; look it up: http://topica.com/lists/othergroup/), and a long string of comments on diverse topics, unmoderated, archived, and (surprise, surprise) readable by anyone in the world. Just try "http://topica.com/lists/othergroup/read?start=441 That will access the Topica database at the first comments (or complaints) by Pedro of January 15. Topica's directions are: "http://topica.com/lists/othergroup/read Better watch what you say, for all we know Artner may be reading this. /jno Oops, I just noticed: now 71 subscribers. ========================================================== From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 12:02:03 2002 Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 04:22:30 -0600 (CST) From: jno Reply-To: othergroup@topica.com To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Other Group : website questions (short) On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Keri L. Butler wrote: "... I could offer the use of a spare domain for a web site, which would make it totally public and open to the whole community of other artists, viewers, gallery goers..." " I'm interested in discussing this idea further -- we should think about a few questions: -how will it be different from other local web sites? -who will manage it? more than one person? will it be edited or anarchic? -will people contribute if they know everyone can read what they write? can there be anonymous writings? -could there be selected topic threads that people can choose to participate in? Finally have time for this. I'll add my thoughts in brief form, and expand on them later. Thus the gearhead details of how a web-site could work, design considerations, permission levels, etc, will be posted later. You may want to skip the later (longer) post. " -who will manage it? -more than one person? -will it be edited or anarchic? Somebody has to set it up, and have access to the website directory and the database. That will be a geek with account access and (if installation of binaries has to be done) with root permission to a machine. The site could be managed (or owned) by one or more people who call the shots. And they could enlist help in turn. SlashCode uses 6 levels of access, PHPLIB uses 3 or 4. One of those in any case would be "admin" access which allows the admin person(s) to make changes - to the data base at the least. Editing is up to the website owners - could be none, could be communally, it could be real minimal. Prolly you want to impose some 'order' from the web pages themselves. You could have various levels of access, posting formats, and posting delays. I suggest you start with anarchy, and see what happens. Just build in the ability to remove obnoxious material, or deny use to some people. Most people behave, though. So you only need to prevent defacement. Cracking is very unlikely, using the right OS, and DB. You will more likely run into unbelievable stupidity (evolution has taken a turn, here in the West), most of which will be harmless. Watch for these emails: "So, how do I find your web site, and if I find it what do I do then?" " -will people contribute if they know everyone can read what they write? They do now. Topica is open to reading by anyone with a browser. What keeps most people of the OtherGroup lurking in the background is some fear of disapproval by peers. Like, you can talk to trusted friends at a party, but you would not start shouting gossip about. It will take a core group of writers to teach by example how to employ some gentle methods of criticism and disagreement. Like Bulka remarking about the KDP site, "maybe it is mostly the horribly clever design..". I would have said something like, "That F-- site F-- sucks," but I carefully kept my mouth shut. "-can there be anonymous writings? That happens now. Like, who is "examiner" at newartexaminer.mag? Is it their internal auditor? Some people don't sign a name at all. Yes, anonymity should be optional, so you could sign with some cute name, or use your own name. Email addresses should not _ever_ be shown. " -could there be selected topic threads that people can choose to participate in? Sure - there is now, by default. And some threads are actually established by people filling out the "Subject" line, although more often the actual content drifts about a bit, and there are a lot of hops and skips. As a Listserv you get a linear set of postings, where you just have to guess what is going on. A website could do much better with ease and elegance, if only for the visual proximity of texts, and certainly cause it easy to track follow-ups, parent posts, children, cold starts. /jno ==^================================================================ From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 12:02:35 2002 Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 06:15:52 -0600 (CST) From: jno Reply-To: othergroup@topica.com To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Other Group website questions, long (part 1) This is the long version answering Keri's questions, Part 1 (1) first question: " -how will it be different from other local web sites? If openly run, that is, if it would require very little editorial intervention, it would certainly be totally different. That can be done. As I mentioned, imagine a CNN page dedicated to art discussions. There would obviously be links elsewhere, other topics, a database of .. who knows, maybe art openings, cars for sale, studio rentals, addresses of galleries, other resources, images. All this would actually not be difficult to set up, and designed to be no effort to maintain -- at least it ought to be set up as such. The main idea is to have people post and comment on each other's postings, and to provide a free resource to the wider art community, and to fall within the current charter of OtherGroup: "A consortium of Chicago art curators, gallerists, collectors and artists." Gallerist? Well, whatever. With a MySQL database and PHP web page script, the posts would be near instantaneous. Or .. depends on how much control you want. Any post would track its parent and children, so you could continue through a thread. The newest posts ought to show on the index page, cause, after all, they represent the latest news. Additional pages should be made for.. all postings this week, last week, this month, last month, last year, whatever.. or a sort by diego bobby, Bulka, Pedro. Or by topics, or by lists of topics. "subset of "how would it be different" Possibilities and examples, the point of which is to impress you with the fact that things _can_ just run on their own..... - The Spaces.Org page http://spaces.org/openings.htm gets created automatically every week, without human intervention. This could be stolen every week, or linked to. It's a perl script which runs from a crontab entry, and checks the Reader website for updates to the art listings. It updates the web page in 12 seconds. - Since January the same script has started an archive of openings, located at http://spaces.org/reader/index.htm and also a database of gallery addresses and phone numbers (this last is not on line yet). - Keri's FYI is not currently archived (that I know of), but could easily be. Procmail could redirect incoming "From: Keri, Subject: FYI" email to a web site subdirectory, and invoke a Perl script to rewrite an index file. - Better yet: Keri would access a database table of 'new openings and ongoings' via a webpage which only shows up if she has 'admin' permission. Additions and changes could then be made any time, and a report pulled down for remailing later in the week. Meanwhile the data could serve as a resource at the web site. And it would always be up to date. - The chicagoart.net calendar pages which list current and upcoming openings, at http://chicagoart.net/calendar.php are written on the fly - that is, they don't really exist. There are pages for this month's openings, next month, this week, next week, today, plus the events for any calendar date. All run with PHP web page script, and database queries. As soon as a new event gets 'posted' by one of the clients, it is entered in the database, and your next hit to any of the pages will show it. If the month changes, the page changes (exactly at midnight), etc. This too, could be stolen or linked (stolen, as in mirrored). - Any number of items could be added to a database(s) and written to web pages 'on the fly' -- openings, calls for work, ads, artists' statements, images, other links. There is no reason not to let the community at large make use of a public resource and bulletin board These bulletins could be aged, so they disappear after a time. It is a matter of sorting out who gets what level of permissions, and what the minimum restrictions should be, which could be less than the official imposed restrictions of SlashCode or PHPLIB (session control). - All the past posts at Topica, or from any starting point, could be dumped and archived locally, no problem. Most of this could be automated, but a human would have to actually read them to figure which post followed which earlier post. - A script could be set up which would just get 'new' posts from Topica, and add them to a database. It could be done from saved e-mails also. The distinct advantage of an amalgamated web site is that all the information could be in _one_ location. I know, you say.. doesn't the Reader do this? Well, sort of. And the city of Chicago tries too, and other places. But there is no place to actually actively discuss art among peers. There may be hundreds of 'discussion forums' and the like at various website, but they remain hidden from view - they will be found on back pages, they are an afterthought, an add-on gimmick. To have discussions and comment up front would make the OtherGroup site different. And to be even more truly different, this web site could be _really fast_. It deals in information, not web-drool, and information, even if half the stuff has to be extracted from a database, beats graphics 10 to 1 in delivery speed. Maybe 40 to 1. "Design for speed." /jno ==^================================================================ From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 12:03:00 2002 Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 02:35:33 -0600 (CST) From: jno Reply-To: othergroup@topica.com To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Other Group (website questions, part 2) part 2, long answers on website questions... (2) second question: " -who will manage it? -more than one person? -will it be edited or anarchic? The website will need a few managers: Somebody has to get the site going, and somebody to maintain the inner workings. To get the basic information up: pages you _must_ have, levels of permission, authentication. To set up a database, and make adjustments, corrections, rescues once in while. I you check slashdot.org you will see two people spending full time moderating the site (but it also _way_ busy). They consider the value of each post they receive, and allow it on the site or not the next day. They do have a series of 'more trusted' writers, and lesser trusted, etc. Actually it sounds like way too much work for OtherGroup. Actually you only need edits for deleting public comments. And I would recommend total anarchy as a starting point, and just see where it goes. So prolly you would have: owner, editor, superuser, manager " to make top level decisions, edit as needed. regular contributors " we have 70 people already qualified as folks safe for extensive post. " Topica's 'authentication' consists of rejecting your email if the 'From:' is not on the list. A public website should be more sophisticated, and ought to require passwords for anyone who posts anything of considerable size. trusted users, " Who might post only on certain pages, like gallery owners, and others who might make limited posts (like announcements of openings, ads) or once a day, or once a week. public access " I really think we should allow just about _anyone_ to add comments anywhere. Small comments, like a few hundred characters. Frequency can be limited with domain/user_agent signatures. I think the drawback of the listserv is that the Other Group users are inept about email, or in a stupendous hurry, and occasionally dead drunk. A website wont help impulsive posts if it goes real-time, it wont correct spelling or smooth sentences. But if 'regular contributors' have the right to make extensive posts, they should also have the ability to edit or even withdraw their postings. That would be very different from the listserv. " Emailers seldom quote what they are responding to. A web based response, could automagically add who and what is being responded to, even quote the _opening_ lines. " Emailers do not clean up the email and leave endless garbage attached A web based compose box would immediately fix the cleanup problem. " Emailers fail to fill out their names in their email setup, so that at times you have no idea who is writing. A web site would always include a handle or name for a writer. " Emailers seldom change the "Subject:" line. A website could (if a posting was in response to a prior post) enter the subject of the thread, and other information from the prior post. And for new threads force you to fill in a 'subject'. What would be especially impressive is to see posts and the appropriate follow-up together on one page -- rather than the current single strand. Recommendations: " -think of how the site should operate -consider what sort of attitude will be projected, -reduce the need for editing and intervention to a minimum, -keep anarchy alive (yes, please, that's what art is about), -keep Topica up and running while you test, or keep it running forever for the hardened conservatives -trust people to be mostly honest and not mean-spirited. Stupid, yes. Stupidity has to be accommodated. /jno ==^================================================================ From kutler73@hotmail.com Tue Mar 12 12:03:49 2002 Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:30:03 -0600 From: Keri L. Butler Reply-To: othergroup@topica.com To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Re: Other Group website questions, long (part 1) Jno, I am very interested in this project. Here are my thoughts (part 1): "That would be about it... or something like it. As I mentioned, imagine a CNN page dedicated to art discussions. There would obviously be links elsewhere, other topics, a database of .. who knows, maybe art openings, cars for sale, studio rentals, addresses of galleries, other resources, images. " -YES! this sounds good. "Additional pages should be made for.. all postings this week, last week, this month, last month, last year, whatever.. or a sort by diego bobby, Bulka, Pedro. Or by topics, or by lists of topics." -good, I would list by topics "Keri's FYI is not currently archived (that I know of), but could easily be. Procmail could redirect incoming "From: Keri, Subject: FYI" email to a web site subdirectory, and invoke a Perl script to rewrite an index file." -FYI is archived on Topica as well. "Better yet: Keri would access a database table of 'new openings and ongoings' via a webpage which only shows up if she has 'admin' permission. Additions and changes could then be made any time, and a report pulled down for remailing later in the week. Meanwhile the data could serve as a resource at the web site. And it would always be up to date" -anything to make it easier... to be continued... ==^================================================================ From kutler73@hotmail.com Tue Mar 12 12:03:57 2002 Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 18:03:18 -0600 From: Keri L. Butler Reply-To: othergroup@topica.com To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Re: Other Group (website questions, part 2) reply to: "part 2, long answers on website questions... "...Actually it sounds like way too much work for OtherGroup. Actually you only need edits for deleting public comments. And I would recommend total anarchy as a starting point, and just see where it goes. - I agree. I can do basic maintenance, but nothing involving programming. "Topica's 'authentication' consists of rejecting your email if the 'From:' is not on the list. A public website should be more sophisticated, and ought to require passwords for anyone who posts anything of considerable size." -does this mean discussion will not be via email, but you will have to visit the web site to participate and/or read messages? "public access "I really think we should allow just about _anyone_ to add comments anywhere. Small comments, like a few hundred characters. Frequency can be limited with domain/user_agent signatures." - we should be able to restrict messages from those who send inappropriate comments. " should also have the ability to edit or even withdraw their postings." - this would change the flow of discussions though. "Emailers fail to fill out their names in their email setup, so that at times you have no idea who is writing. A web site would always include a handle or name for a writer." - but still allowing autonomous listings.. I guess people can make up names if they want anyway... All the rest sounds good. One more idea -- should we somehow merge Othergroup with the spaces.org site? Or at least link them. thanks, keri ==^================================================================ From kutler73@hotmail.com Tue Mar 12 12:04:05 2002 Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:04:10 -0600 From: keri butler To: jno@blight.com Subject: Re: restricting the unwashed public "...Most obnoxious people will go away if they notice that their behaviour is being ignored, but if some cracker is absolutely intent on giving you trouble they will figure a way to circumvent weak security measures. At that point you put a lock on the website for a while..." -ok, maybe we should just see how it goes first - not blocking anyone or making them obtain passwords (yes, I agree that's prob. too much hassle for them to deal with). Then, if there is an annoying commenter (I think othergroup has only had one or two in about two years which is pretty good). then we can deal with it. "Most of these various choices are scriptable in HTML and PHP. And HTML is easy as pie, a 6 year old could learn it in 15 minutes. Well - if they could type. Really. -ok, actually, I did learn HTML in school - about 7 years ago though. keri ========================================================= From kutler73@hotmail.com Tue Mar 12 12:04:11 2002 Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:12:49 -0600 From: keri butler To: jno@blight.com Subject: Re: maintenance, ":) I can program, So can Rob, so can one of my hacker kids (he's a programmer) - but we all need time. I'll cover that in part 4, which was discussed off-line with Rob." -good. "What would be nice is to get some money for that -like from IAC. But we would need a 'grant writer' (IAC forms are just goofy), and an NFP. Got any connections?" I have experience writing grants -- I've gotten money from the IAC and the NEA before! I'll have to think about the NFP part... "...As an 'admin' you get to see links on pages which do not show on other people's windows of the same page. The admin links route you to protected pages where changes in database material can be made: adds, deletes, edits. Mostly usefull things...." um, ok. sounds easy enough, I'll probably just need someone to show me an example first. but, I can usually figure these things out. thanks! keri ========================================================= From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 12:04:19 2002 Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:43:59 -0600 (CST) From: jno To: keri butler Subject: html On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, keri butler wrote: "-ok, actually, I did learn HTML in school - about 7 years ago though. alright! I (also) just dove into building a webpage six years ago with the 'HTMLPrimer.html' file of the NSCA site. That was HTML-2, 3, 3x. Things have not changed much, even though the source of most web pages is totally unreadable today because of excessive use of CSS and JavaScript. But look at web pages of programmers and hackers, and you find no CSS and no JavaScript. And they are always the fastest pages to deliver. The big improvement is imbedded ASP or PHP code -- truly 'code' for it mimics the C language, but not as goofy as JavaS. later /jno =============================================================== From kutler73@hotmail.com Tue Mar 12 12:04:51 2002 Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:23:42 -0600 From: keri butler To: jno@blight.com Subject: Re: nfp sounds interesting. Do you want to ask them if they'd be ok with the idea? Then, I'm assuming I'd write the grant, and part of the money would go to Gallery 312 (actually, probably under the Peach Club) and the rest...? what other costs are there? Do we (you, me, others if there are any?) get paid for our time? keri =========================================================== From: jno To: keri butler Subject: nfp Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 18:02:53 -0600 (CST) On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, keri butler wrote: "I have experience writing grants -- I've gotten money from the IAC and the NEA before! I'll have to think about the NFP part... The reason I ask is that Paul Brenner of Gallery 312 just broached a 'new' website project with me. Of course he does this, among other noble reasons, to keep up a flow of grant moneys to Gallery 312. The new proposal involves building a database of all gallery openings in Chicago - at first with info like: gallery names, addresses and such, exhibition dates, artists names. Then soon after, the inclusion of (gallery generated) images -- only of works which were actually displayed -- and artist bios and such. Gallery access - or accounts -- cause I dont really want to work with 6000 artists, 100 or 200 galleries is enough. And only exhibited images because otherwise it can get absolutely overwhelming. The nifty thing about this is that it is not (explicitly) a sales promotion - and thus not in competition with the 200 gallery websites, the 100 art/auction/sales catalogs, or the 700 artists web pages. Instead it functions like a "Chicago Art History Database". Not a big deal to set up, since I can extract most of the information automatically from the Reader's website (I have done that for 4 years anyway, and even with their permission). Just need to keep an eye on it. Of course if the Reader goes under, the project stops. It is paracitic . Anyway, this sort of thing could, I suppose, be a subdivision of an "OtherGroup" website. The only thing in it for an NFP is to extract some of the grant money as 'administrator' for the project. Otherwise they keep their hands off it. Our benefit would be to have a source of fund from an organization which is not all that critical about receipts and such, but is delighted at 'results.' And that we can do -- since there seems to be a complete lack of imagination out in the real world with respect to the possibilities of websites. later /jno ====================================================== From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 12:04:58 2002 Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:37:27 -0600 (CST) From: jno Reply-To: othergroup@topica.com To: othergroup@topica.com Subject: Other Group (website questions, part 3) OK, part 3 of web questions. Hope this helps. I'll post _this_ publicly, but maybe respond privately This is the longer version answering Keri's questions. Part 3 (3) next question: actually a few: " - will people contribute if they know everyone can read what they write? - can there be anonymous writings? - could there be selected topic threads that people can choose to participate in? - Will people contribute if it is public?" The Topica site _is_ public and anyone in the world can read anything, and you cannot change anything if you typed "faggot" at 2:28 in the morning. "http://topica.com/lists/othergroup/read?start=509 Other Group people contribute now, and they know it is public. Not only public, but public among peers. That last is more scary. "Can there be anonymous writing?" Most every public posting / discussion website uses voluntary anonymity. Even the UseNet is mostly anonymous. It is up to the writer. As an admin you might want to ascertain who new subscriber are, and judge if they can be trusted to behave. So the admin might know, and perhaps no-one else. On the other hand, you could also try one-line bios, so the public has _some_ idea of who the contributors are (I can see it now: "Fred - is a Chicago based writer" -- how enlightening). "Could there be selected topic threads that people can choose to participate in?" There are topic threads now - sort of. You have to check the title, often also the contents. A database would make a thread a lot clearer, to both posters and readers. Post should automatically list and quote a line or two from the prior post. It will also help thread if posts appear visually next or near the parent post. In the database a post would receive an index (automatically), and would also store the index of the parent post. If a post is its own parent then a new thread has started. We simple need a button which reads "new topic". Every post (might) also have children. A complete run through generations of parent and child posts is the thread of a topic. Distinct 'topics' could also be started up on separate pages. /jno ==^================================================================ From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 12:05:52 2002 Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 04:02:41 -0600 (CST) From: jno To: keri butler Subject: Re: nfp On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, keri butler wrote: "sounds interesting. Do you want to ask them if they'd be ok with the idea? Then, I'm assuming I'd write the grant, and part of the money would go to Gallery 312 (actually, probably under the Peach Club) and the rest...? what other costs are there? Do we (you, me, others if there are any?) get paid for our time? Oh, yes -- we wanna be paid, for sure. I'd suggest 312 write the grant application, since he represents the NFP side, and that way we would be subcontractors to Gallery 312. Gallery 312 would do the 'administration' -- documents and reports, and not be involved with the actual website construction. Paul Brenner is good at it and he has a direct line (or so it seems) to Rose Parisi. I don't think IAC would fund a website for OtherGroup per se, because there are only 70 people involved - even if we went public, we don't have the support of millions, at least not right away. I think they might want to fund a art-history in the making site, and combining the two would be more appealing. I started an email to Brenner, sort of like thinking out loud.. but haven't sent it yet. I figure out a few things, but I think combining an historical archive, an on-going discussion group, and open augmentation of other information, would be an exceptional resource. Maybe replace spaces.org and chicagoart.net. Yes, start thinking of what all has to be written to present such ideas cohesively and as a must-have facility. ............................ Meanwhile (in response to your 'cost' question), let me give you our chicagoart.net example, and get to costs after: I had an extensive email notification system running for a few years, for my own benefit. In spring 2000 I thought of extending this. I had opened another account at blight,com (for other reasons) and also registered chicagoart.net and chicagoart.org (cause the previous owner had dropped the ball on those names). These came in handy. The project was suggested to Paul Brenner in Spring of 2000. We got promises of funding in August, so in the second week of September I sat down with my son Kees and went over the details of a database design. I designed the page layout (for speed and an open look), wrote the main texts and the boilerplate, laid out the repeating page divisions which became the includes, and set up the levels and links. We were trying to keep things as simple as possible -- in the face of a fairly complex facility. Kees designed the 10 database tables. He had done that before for an apartment listing service and for an accounting system. He then started translating stuff into PHP snippets and SQL queries, and added session control (cookies) and authentication. Over the course of four days 90 percent of the website was written and tested against four browsers (MS Explorer, Netscape, Opera, and Lynx). About 10,000 lines of 'code' and 65 separate files - most as web pages. There are also perl scripts which write the email and hand over 2000 email processes to the sendmail deamon. The files were in a test subdirectory, under RCS control, so we could both work simultaneously on the set of files without undoing each other's work. The whole process is still based on that: changes are tested elsewhere, with fictional galleries, and fake patrons. We exchanged some 700 emails dealing with the details - in one week We went public on September 20, 2000, and had to change some broken things over the next two weeks as people started using the site: Explorer would not un-cache posts, and Netscape would just wipe a post on a page change. I suggested separate 'edit' and 'view' pages, which solved the problem. Theoretically the post and view should operate from the same page, but not if you try to accommodate for 700 different browsers, and 100 people who cannot find the on-off switch on their computers. Since them we have only made cosmetic, copy, and feature changes. In December last year Kees reorganized some of the database tables, and added instant removals via encrypted passwords. In January I started adding calendar pages. The entire maintenance of the email database (4000 entries) is done by remote control, via the Lynx (text) browser which is 20 times faster than Explorer or Netscape. The work mostly consists of wading through daily batches of Mailer-Daemon bounces, a few request for deletes from stupid people, and answering inane question from Exhibitors or potential Exhibitors. I only got the handling of bounced email down to a system this last month. If you avoid extensive emails, the OtherGroup site should be a lot easier to manage. Costs To us the cost is _not_ the time spent on the project. We both have this hacker attitude where solving the problems and setting up the design is more important than money. Or time: figure if an 8 man programming team can design a website like this in 6 months, then we ought to be able to do it in a week. The value of 4 days of solid programming is on the order of $20,000 to $25,000 - Kees gets away with billing at $400 per hour (I get a hell of a lot less). So obviously money aint important. We ended up with $700 each for our efforts - which have extended way past September of 2000. The continued involvement is only justified as a love affair -- it is like gearheads drooling over engines. I'm sure your OtherGroup listserv is like that. IAC allows (I think) $50 or $100/hr for professional services, so the 'budget' is built on that. Add Paul and you, and we have: $200/hr for about 50 hours. We could tally up $10,000 in 'in-kind' fees, but most of this would be accounted as 'in-kind' services, only a portion of which could be turned around to come back to us. Also billable is the actual cash outlay for services or materials. "............ So after a day of looking at this email, I just sat down and made up a 'budget' -- I used to do that at IDOT for RTA and CTA (just make it up, that is). Consider it a starting point. I have yet to get back to Paul Brenner on the whole concept. ====================================================================== Test site operating costs (per month for a year's trial run): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- P K J KB phone internet connection 20 20 20 20 ISP charges 40 40 - 20 Account charges (if any) - 50 70 - --------------------------- (numbers are really rounded, BTW) total 250 * 12 = 3000 ======================================================================== - project phase- (professional tasks) -persons- -time- -rate- -amount- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Site concepts, initial pages (designer, programmer, graphic designer) KB,J,K 2 days,50 hrs 100/hr 500 (2) operational concepts, database design, code (designer, programmer) K, J 6 days,100hrs 100/hr 1000 (3) Initial data entry (programmer) J 14days,100hrs 100/hr 1000 (4) promotion and publicity (graphic designer) KB 1 days/wk,over 3 months, 24hr 100/hr 240 (5) Debugging and rework (programmer, designer) K 2 days,16 hrs 100/hr 160 (6) Continued monitoring (designer, programmer) KB,J 1 day/week 12 months 100/hr 800 (subtotal 3700) (7) project management (manager) P (20 percent) 720 --------------------------- total 4420 --------------------------- grand total 7420 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ .. Which is actually a puny grant. Half of the 'labor' has to come from in-kind services, and IAC then might match the rest. So actually our labor will show as project income. The net result is that we might end up with $3500 - which, no matter what the 'budget' says, we will just split 4 ways (and we better agree on that, otherwise Gallery 312 will attempt to take half). That might pay for the actual costs of phone - internet - account charges. .................. facilities: If we went through a decent 'normal' site we would end up with account billing of $200 per month, and a setup fee for alliasing domain names, etc I am not talking about a Yahoo freebee web page. We need a T-1 domain, one or two hops off the backbone, with Apache running mod-PHP, a MySQL server, and a Unix/Linux OS (Kees will _not_ work with MS, me neither), and maybe with a gig of RAM, separate routers, backup machines, at least two DNS servers, solid sendmail, Perl5.. etc. We would propose to use Blight.com, which is a communally owned domain (and machines), where we have root and account permission. Although Rob's spare box would do as well. As long the website does not go commercial, there is no problem. more costs: If you want to do a snail-mailing to galleries to introduce this concept, add $4000. Think of layout and design, graphics, printing costs, office supplies, phone calls, travel.. I'll get part 4 of the aswers to questions out later this week. /jno ============================================================== From jno@blight.com Tue Mar 12 14:27:01 2002 Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 12:38:42 -0600 (CST) From: jno To: kutler73@hotmail.com Subject: more .. stuff [I had this ready a few weeks ago.. but I don't think I sent it. a few notes added since] Hi Keri; Sorry this is going so slow. Since "funding" came up with the idea of adding a Chicago database, i thought i would not post this, but just send it to you. Besides, nothing seems to be addressed by the og's except criticism and art fairs. I also passed the following past Rob about two [four by now] weeks ago. He has no objections. We need to get the story of the 'purpose' for the website straight. I would assume 'open discussion' plus 'event archive' - so the following was amended a little (I wrote it two weeks ago) to reflect those two. Any further thoughts - send. Need to think of IAC presentation also. Answers .. part 4, 5 items: (1) startup (2) site needs (3) visual design (4) SlashCode (5) PHP/MySQL ................................................................... startup: Keri owns "OtherGroup.Net", Rob owns "ChinStroker.Com", and I own "ChicagoArt.Org" -- none of these are assigned to ip numbers. I like "OtherGroup.Net" the best. We need an internet connected puter, with account access (telnet, email, ftp), and enough freedom to manage a MySQL server (and offhand, Apache, mod-PHP, Perl, PHP, and PHPLIB) Rob has that (or most of it), me too. [the website could also be split up among machines at different locations, I have done that a number of times. The viewer never knows.] I could get 'othergroup.net' added to the dns server at blight.com and have it propagated worldwide in two days. I could point (link) to it from Spaces, and it would get listed on a dozen search sites within a few weeks (Spaces is listed widely, and the robots keep returning). I would try to use a separate account than my own (Blight still owes me some favors). Rob could do all the same. So, uh, when do we start? ................................................................... site needs: We need to be willing to put up a web site before every design feature has been finalized, and before all the bugs are found. Not needed: Java, Flash, Kompozer, or web_page_editors. Hardcore needs: type-copy for a number for stationary web pages: - aims and purposes of the site, usage policies, - how things work at the site, help-file for the incompetant, - hints and suggestions for presenting material, and whatever else. All of these to be unchanging files, no problem. [except someone has to start writing the copy] Needed at startup: A database of the postings since January (that is about 120 or so) [200 by now]. From a reasonable table design it could be extended to serve other purposes. That sort of table seems straight forward. Needed at startup: A database extracted from the Reader postings of openings and show announcements which I have stashed for the last [2] month[s]. That will require some interesting 'sounds like' and regex searches. But do-able in Perl. Might be very interesting. Needed soon after: an interface with the postings database which will allow extension and editing if need be. No problem, this is pretty standard, just need security. Needed from the start: Obsolute security. PHPLIB is a proven library set for that. No problem, In fact the big problem will be to loosen it up. Needed along the way: Any other nice things. If the page design is generic enough, that also should be no problem. ............................................................. site visual design: As visual artist you probably ask "What will it look like?" Prolly mostly as expected: a menu bar on the left or at the top, and "articles" filling the rest of the page. Maybe presented in synopsis form, as a hint at what the rest of the copy would cover. That allows a number of 'current' items to all be present on the opening page. And links to the full copy, on a page which allows responses, and which also shows other responses. Simple enough? That would be the basics. But, ahum, before you start seeing this in earth-tone bars, delicate backgrounds, fancy depressing push-buttons, nicely designed lettering, cute gif files, etc -- let me warn against putting any _graphic_ design ahead of _content_ design. We need to figure out how to deal with content before you consider 'design'. The graphics has to fit the web site, not the other way around. ................................................................... slashcode: Rob favors a SlashCode site -- a story posting site run by Perl scripts, which also write the pages (and a MySQL database), and requires an Apache server with Perl includes. See a sample http://slashdot.com Comments from elsewhere: "Then there is Slashdot, a technology-geek site owned by the Open Source Developers Network. Stories are posted each day and readers are invited to discuss the news. The message boards quickly fill up with flame wars, lengthy debates, and good-natured ribbing on everything from Microsoft's anti-open source stance to robot art." Rob strikes me as a dedicated gearhead, and I would vote for his idea, if it weren't for all those Perl scripts. There has to be a better way. I have four objections to the SlashCode -- --1 It just takes too much editorial insertion to make it worth the effort. Look at http://slashdot.com and you notice two editors up all night making decisions on what goes to the index page the next day, Not that any other design won't require attention the first weeks, the first months, maybe the first year. But the goal should be to have it run by itself. With reasonable security against defacement and spamming, a web site _could_ completely run itself. --2 SlashCode is not well maintained. Source Forge states as much, and points to people who have started a PHP equivalent (note that!), but they are not done yet. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/slashcode) This becomes a problem, because future maintainers will need to get into the details of the scripts. And changes to the overall operation might be near impossible if you are not versed in Perl. (Perl is the most eclectic script language in use). (http://cpan.org) --3 Slash documentation is inadequite. There are some docs in Perl "pod" format, but mostly from what i have seen, Slashcode's documentation of the scripts doesn't exist. --4 It is slower than any mod-PHP site. ................................................................... PHP/MySQL I would recommend the most widely used and best supported and most reliable file server, the most widely used and best supported web page scripting language, and the most widely used and absolutely fastest database query language: - Apache server (http://apache.org) - PHP (http://www.php.net), - MYSQL (http://mysql.com), and add: - PHPLIB session control (http://phplib.netuse.de). Open source, free, best code support, solid documentation, fastest, and most widely used throughout the world, is that good? Also important is that it can be turned over to anyone else for maintenance without her having to learn much of anything, or having to fix problems with patches from Microsoft on a daily basis, and never be able to get a single question answered by them. I'd be inclined (thus) to write pages in HTML/PHP using a MySQL database. PHP writes web pages on the fly. It is really fast, especially when used with mod-PHP enabled at the Apache server. And _none_ of the PHP scripting show up on web pages - unlike JavaScript - making it immensely more secure, and faster in the deliver of pages. You still have to write all the PHP code snippets for the webpages, and the required SQL queries, but anyone who has ever written a html page can handle PHP, and MySQL is fairly simple. Rob has an internet connected box running an Apache server and PHP, and probably a MySQL server. I have an accounts at two Linux sites running Apache with mod-PHP, and a MySql server running. And I have permissions on a database called "OtherGroup" (got that installed to play with). I'm willing to set something up (without assigning the OtherGroup.net name to an ip number) and work with anyone else, or turn it over to others. So when do we start? /jno (end)